Tyagaraja worried about many things — about the death of brahmanatva — the lofty way of thinking and living, of sham religiosity, of sycophancy, of Lord Rama’s reluctance to bestow grace. In one such song in the poignant raga Naganandini, he laments: sattaleni dinamunu vacchena Such days have come… Days that have no strength (sattu) …
Continue reading “What makes one refer to Carnatic music as “classical or art music”?”
Vocal with vina accompaniment: Sreevidhya & Chandramouli (Karaikudi Bani) Dr. Srinivasa Ayya Srinivasan, a dear friend of ours, and an Indologist at University of Hamburg, Germany, passed away on May 2nd, 2019. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Pia Srinivasan, who was a student of late Rajeswari Padmanabhan. We pay homage to his …
Vaitari: A musical picture book from Kerala by V.C. Arun with an Introduction for educators and parents by Ludwig Pesch Making studies as pleasant as musicReview by A. Sangameswaran Two musicologists of international repute are on an innovative mission to educate music lovers across the world about the intrinsic value of Carnatic music as a potential tool for education …
Continue reading “Press coverage: A musical picture book from Kerala”
T. R. Sundaresan (Chennai) is a versatile percussionist with “A-grade” ranking at the national Indian broadcasting service (All India Radio). He performs several South Indian percussion instruments with equal virtuosity: Mridangam (the double-sided main drum of Carnatic music), Ghatam (claypot), Kanjira (small tambourine), Morsing (Jew’s harp) and Konnakkol (rhythmic solmisation) T. R. Sundaresan’s mridangam was soft, …
